Microsoft's Macs Hacked in Java Attack

Below:

Next story in Tech and gadgets

In yet another round of Friday-afternoon security disclosures,
Microsoft today (Feb. 22) admitted that it had fallen victim to
the same Java-based malware attacks that plagued Twitter,
Facebook and Apple.

"As reported by Facebook and Apple, Microsoft can confirm that we
also recently experienced a similar security intrusion," wrote
Microsoft Trustworthy Computing Security General Manager Matt
Thomlinson in a Microsoft company blog posting put up at
5:45 p.m. ET.

Even more significantly, it wasn't Microsoft's Windows computers
that were hacked so much as it was Microsoft's Macs.

"We found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac
business unit, that were infected by malicious software using
techniques similar to those documented by other organizations,"
Thomlinson wrote. "We have no evidence of customer data being
affected and our investigation is ongoing."

Late last Friday (Feb. 15), Facebook
dropped the news that its network had been penetrated in
January by malicious software that infected some of its
computers.

Facebook disclosed more than did Twitter,
Apple
or indeed Microsoft; it chronicled how an infected website had
exploited a flaw in Java software to get through browser
security, and said that other companies had been affected as
well.

It's not clear whether Macs were more susceptible than other
machines to the Java
flaw, which was fully patched by Java maker Oracle on Feb. 1.
(All the infections presumably took place last month.)